


No Worries

by flowersforgraves



Category: Has Anyone Heard of the Left/Right Game? - NeonTempo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Gen, POV Second Person, Plants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:09:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25409713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowersforgraves/pseuds/flowersforgraves
Summary: The road claims Lilith as its own.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13
Collections: Multifandom Horror Exchange (2020)





	No Worries

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kimaracretak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/gifts).



You can feel the change inside you in the brief moment it occurs.

You have been “Lilith” for a brief time -- heartbeats, in the span of your life. A breath, nothing more. You have been Jen for a much longer time, and Jennifer before that, and before _that_ you did not exist in any meaningful way. But when you sit in the car beside Eve, when you stare down Rob J. Guthard’s Wrangler, when you are Lilith, it feels like you are alive for the first time. Jen is no more than a dream on the road.

Sarah, on the other hand, _Eve_ , is the most real thing you have ever experienced. She digs her nails into your wrist as you round another corner, and your perception sharpens with the pinprick pain of it. Blood wells up when she lets go, and you lick your wrist clean without thinking twice. 

In the evening you look down at your wrist, where you’ve been rubbing it, and there are tiny green leaves there, like a three-dimensional tattoo. You look closer, and if you didn’t know better you might swear the leaves reach up toward your face.

Apollo’s voice snaps you out of your intense study, calling you to dinner.

Something has changed. You don’t know what it is, yet, but you will. You’re sure of that, if nothing else. With Eve at your side, you can do anything.

Ace dies the next morning. Jubilation sets off your danger sense in a way nothing else on the road has thus far, and you can feel a piercing pain in your jaw, at the exact point when (you learn later, from Bristol, related in a shaking too-quiet voice full of raw emotion) the tow-hook sinks into Ace’s brain. Your blood sings -- grief, yes, but joy and adrenalin and fear and exhilaration and risk too -- and you happen to glance down at your wrist. The skin there is mottled dark green now, not unlike moss, and the tiny leaves have begun to twine up your arm, near-luminescent green against the fabric of your jacket. 

You pull your sleeve down and squeeze Eve’s hand tight, comforting her. She hasn’t been changed yet, but you’re confident she will soon. 

Passing through Jubilation marked something else. This, you’re far more sure of than the original change -- you can feel the vines warm and pulsing in your flesh. With barely a thought they dart down your hand, taking your fingers under their strange spell. Your veins are green, tangled things, your fingernails thorns, your knuckles whorls and imperfections in tree-bark. It feels right.

Were this anywhere but here, you would be horrified. Eve certainly is, when she sees your arm after you stop for the night. She screams, and screams, and screams. She screams _Jen_ , but when you tell her that your name is Lilith, that only makes her scream more. Rob Guthard tries to grab you, but the road has claimed him, too. Your hand clamps around his arm, and petals fall from your lips when you speak. “There’s nothing wrong, Ferryman,” you say, and dig the tips of the thorns into his skin.

“There’s nothing wrong,” he echoes, and it fades between disbelief and calm. He’s rubbing his arm too, you notice, and the leaves are already sprouting. Of course. He’s been here more than anyone else, and even if the road claimed you first it holds a special pleasure for claiming Ferryman.

Eve is still screaming.

For the first time, doubt enters your mind. Perhaps she isn’t Eve after all. Perhaps she’s still Sarah, and was never really able to leave the dulled edges and muted colors of Phoenix. Perhaps she still clings to what she sees as reality, and (worst of all) perhaps she rejects the road.

You reach for her, and wooded branches burst from your fingertips to pull her in close, bending like green yew. She only screams louder, though, and the deep wrongness of her flesh -- the meat of it, instead of the blossoming green warmth of plants and sun and light -- beneath your hand moves and roils in a way you find repulsive. You want so badly to draw her into the road alongside you, but the odd remove of the road’s touch veils your emotions enough so that it doesn’t burn when she lashes out.

She kicks at you, but the unmoving wood of your leg does not yield. You release her, because despite her fear she was a dear friend to Jen, the before-you, and she deserves at least a faint hope of potential survival. Of course, you know well that she’ll die before she makes it to the next turn, but she will at least die with hope in her heart. 

“Jen!” she yells, and the part of you that was Jen aches for her, but you belong to the road, now. Sweet nectar runs down your cheeks as you weep from the blossoms that have become your eyes, petals fluttering gently against the bark skin of your face. The last thing that was Jen screams along with her, as the air is choked from your lungs and replaced with a thicket of brambles. But you don’t need to breathe anymore, because the brambles climb their way up your throat and burst from your mouth, flowing out even faster than the petals had earlier. 

The throat-brambles snag Bristol first, rooting her to the spot even as she tries to run. Bluejay is watching from the middle distance, fascinated and horrified at the same time, and you turn your weapons on her with a sense of vindictive glee. She has disrespected you and Eve, and more importantly the road -- even now she doesn’t truly believe what she’s seeing is real. The road will claim her too, in the end. She’ll feed it, even if she rejects it, feed it with blood and tears and pain. When you were Jen you would have been horrified by the fierce joy singing in the sap that replaces your blood, but you don’t need to worry about that anymore.

There’s really nothing you need to worry about anymore.


End file.
